What are your thoughts about H5N1 "bird flu"? Are you doing anything to prepare? Think it's overblown?
What are your thoughts about H5N1 "bird flu"? Are you doing anything to prepare? Think it's overblown?
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Has there been more than like 1 known case of someone contracting it from a person? When the answer to that is yes and we’re in the dozens of known cases plus there’s evidence of it in the local waste water, then I’ll be worrying on a personal level. But not that much because I never stopped masking and I don’t drink raw milk.
Unfortunately these flu outbreaks among livestock that make the jump to humans happen fairly regularly, we’re just more tuned in to it now that we live in a post-COVID world. Improving conditions for animals and farm workers would go a long way in preventing zoonotic diseases from making the leap into humans in the first place.
Bird flu has always been able to jump from birds to humans but not from any other livestock because it wasn’t able to jump from mammal to mammal (that’s why it’s called bird flu instead of something else) that’s also why people are concerned because in less than 2 years it went from being a disease only birds could spread to multiple mammal species suddenly being fully susceptible to it.
I wonder if there's an overlap with COVID affected species. Is it possible for COVID to have made mammalian species more susceptible to illness?
It's absolutely possible and there are several studies on the subject going back to 2020. Probably a part of why people are getting sick with things like RSV more regularly too.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72718-9
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-021-01113-x
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-47720-8 (this one's a study about LC patients immune dysfunction improving over 8 months)